This invention relates to a revolver or hand-held weapon of the type employing a rotatable cylinder.
The revolver has been in existence for many years, and essentially most revolvers are hand-held weapons and operate on exactly the same principles. Such revolvers have a barrel, a body and a handle. The major aspect of the revolver is that the revolver has a cylinder which cylinder contains a plurality of chambers such as a six chambers. Each chamber is adapted to accommodate a bullet or cartridge.
The revolver is associated with a trigger mechanism whereby when the trigger is depressed, the cartridge in the chamber which is aligned with the firing pin is fired through the barrel and the cylinder automatically turns or rotates to the next chamber. As can be ascertained, most users of such weapons do not normally keep track of how many shots are fired. After hearing a series of clicks, when the gun is emptied, they are informed that the revolver has fired all shots and must be reloaded. The only way of keeping track of the number of shots fired is to actually count the shots, and after, for example, six shots have been fired then the user would know that the revolver would have to be loaded.
This, of course, places an additional burden upon a user in that the number of shots fired have to be counted or otherwise indicated to the user. This aspect is particularly important as such revolvers are employed in law enforcement whereby an officer or other official might be utilizing a revolver during a chase or in another stressful situation. In such situations, it would be extremely difficult to keep count of the shots fired.
Based on such circumstances, it is an object of this invention to provide a safety device which essentially constitutes a chamber indicator whereby a user of a revolver or similar firearm can immediately note the chamber that is being employed, and hence by viewing the chamber number or indicia indicative of the chamber, the user can now tell whether or not all the cartridges have been spent as well as which chamber is actually being employed during the firing of the gun.